Inside Job: Treating Murderers and Sex Offenders. The Life of a Prison Psychologist.
Rebecca Myers

Fresh out of university in the mid 1990s, Rebecca becomes a facilitator on the flagship Sex Offender Treatment Programme (SOTP) at HMP Briestfield, a top security prison with a harsh backdrop of misogyny and a strong anti-treatment culture. Her first group includes: Graham, the ex-policeman who kidnapped and raped his neighbour and then murdered the dog walker who tried to rescue her; James the psychopathic gang rapist; Bill the sexual murderer who buried his sex worker victim in the garden; Peter the caretaker who turned into a child killer; Simon who has long been in denial about his abuse of young children and Wayne, the notorious rapist, who attacked several women in their own homes at night wearing a gorilla mask.

Rebecca explores the offences and tries to help the prisoners understand why they committed such heinous crimes, running re-enactments of their offences in a bid to help them increase victim empathy. As the treatment intensifies and she delves into the prisoners’ childhoods and hears their life stories, she is forced to look at the impact her own childhood had on her behaviour in relationships.

This honest, personal narrative explores what it is really like, as a young woman, to work in this secretive, misunderstood environment and engage these vilified men in therapy. It is about why sexual offenders commit their crimes, the uncomfortable truths she discovered about herself along the way, and the power of human connection.